Faith Works 12-31-05
Jeff Gill

After a year of sharing this column with our local readership, I’ve been looking back over my notes and records, preparing (among other things) for 2006.
Turns out I’ve gotten to visit or even preach at services of eighteen congregations out of seven different Christian denominations, which is a very small percentage, to be sure, of the thousand some churches of all traditions in Licking, Perry, Muskingum, and Franklin Counties. It does give me some interesting perspectives, though, that you might miss if you just attend your own and maybe occasional visit a nearby faith community.
It did cross my mind at one point that it might be interesting to do something that a writer for a northeast Ohio paper did a few years back for a stretch: rate worship events the way a restaurant reviewer or film critic might. (Cue horrified shout from editor. . .)
Well, that might work in a more urban area. But aside from other arguments against that proposal, I’ve not only been in an awful lot of area churches for various reasons through the last sixteen years, and don’t want to start wearing wigs and sunglasses like Ruth Reichl checking out how many stars a bistro still should get, but I want to be able to go back to many of them.
So there went that idea.
What I think I can helpfully do is offer some general observations from all of my wandering around, in a spirit of constructive . . . well, decide for yourself if this is criticism, or commentary.
Number one is – wait, let me make a very clear point right off. Anyone one or any one church who’s wondering if I mean "your" church can rest easy, sort of. Each of these points is a cumulative observation, shared because it is such an across-the-board phenomenon.
Right, number one. Many churches have gone to using for some or all services a projection system and words for music that are not on a thick, sound-muffling block of wood pulp to hold in front of your mouth, also known as a hymnal. This is, in general, a great idea.
But what you need, if PowerPoint is part of your musical offering, is for the operator of the system to be part of your rehearsal of that music. Nothing is more frustrating than for the words to consistently be a few lines behind where the praise team is at, and then for the worship leader to lean into the microphone and say to the congregation "C’mon folks, let’s sing out!"
If you wouldn’t practice without your keyboard player, you shouldn’t do it without the display operator either.
Two is right at that operator. And two words, "sans serif." Sans serif is your friend. We know you have hundreds of fonts on your laptop, because it’s a computer. Most of us use them, so you don’t have to show us that capability. Two more words: Arial, and Helvetica.
Three I just hate to get into, because it seems like this point has been beaten to death over my last three decades in church life. Perhaps it has, but apparently not enough folks have been listening. Number three is SIGNAGE.
There are so many reasons to avoid this issue; we all know which door is what, who goes where, and more, bigger signs don’t look, well, nice. But signs are, by definition, for those who don’t know, and isn’t that one of most faith communities’ purposes? In probably forty church buildings I’ve walked through in the last year, perhaps two had clear, consistent, easily visible signage throughout the building.
And a quick fourth: Greeters. If your service starts at 10:30, and they go sit down with their family at 10:29, or even 10:31, you might as well let them skip it.
Most new visitors come late, and on purpose. They want to sneak in, talk to no one, and they’ll leave early too. They also want to know where to go and what to do, but not on your terms (i.e., arrive early). I’ve guest preached a bunch of places where, from my perch, I see people come in late, cast about nervously in the entry area, and turn around and leave.
Greeters, aside from needing some basic training on what a ministry of welcoming means in your church, should be in place at least fifteen minutes past the start of the service. That may feel pointless most Sundays at most churches, but like a parachute, you have to do it each week to be there for the times you really need them.
That’s my New Years gift to more effective outreach for us all, whatever tradition you follow.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; you can send faith community news to him at disciple@voyager.net.


* * *
* * *

Notes From My Knapsack 1-01-06
Jeff Gill

Can Products Change Your Life?

We just celebrated our first Christmas in our home; the Lovely Wife has put up with eleven moves in twenty plus years of marriage, four of them parsonages (five if you count seminary housing).
Along with the obligatory apartments early on we’ve been the second residents of two houses, one fifty years old and another not quite five, which is where we now live and are about to mark a full year.
We’ve used some existing nail holes, spackled and painted and made some new ones. A few trees left the lot, and a couple new ones arrived just in time to wear a full suit of lights for the season (thanks, Jim!), along with some village excavations which we’ll try to grow grass over come the spring.
What’s made homelife so interesting has been our re-formatting of the household operating system, and adjustment of family roles. The LW has long been happy to let me do a majority of the cooking, and my increased time at home has given me the chance to hit the trifecta: pie crusts, pizza dough, and pasta homemade. LW query: "Don’t they still sell that stuff in the stores, hon?" Yes, but I notice she’s still happy to eat it even made at the cost of much more flour etc all around the kitchen.
Which brings us to the major shift of 2005. I now do most of the cleaning around the house. Please don’t assume I never cleaned a toilet or dusted and vacuumed before, but that’s not what has made such an impression on me.
Thanks to friendly loud-voiced men with three stripes on their shoulders and veins popping out of their necks, I learned mopping and fine work with toothbrushes on a very high level. Actually, my mopping technique at home suffers from the fact that I’m still thinking in terms of hundreds of square feet, working on concrete or well-polished pine planking. Oh well. But if you’re expecting a white glove inspection on your toilets, I’m your man.
The hard part isn’t cleaning, in my (newfound) opinion, but in keeping clean. What I’ve been used to is the major impact, the thorough swoosh, and the gleaming final appearance. But the slow, ongoing, bit by bit work of keeping shelves free of dust, the bare floors unstickified, or dishes fairly food fleck free, is a whole ‘nother creature, a creature I have not mastered entirely yet.
Then I discovered Swiffer ©. Life got better, right there. My mother had four kids’ worth of retired cloth diapers for dusting purposes, but we had built up a fair supply of cleaning rags by the time the Little Guy made his appearance. I know how to dust with a bottle of squirt stuff and a cloth (high to low, remove objects and dust bases before replacing, shake outside between rooms), but it takes a fair amount of time.
Not with these little wonders, it doesn’t. One out of the pack does the whole house, no shaking required, and no squirty deal either. We had a brief conference on the whole "curse of the disposable society," and tried some back of an envelope calculation on ergs, economics, and caloric output, and inconclusively decided that we were sticking with the sticky sheets o’ wonder. Laundry costs and our time count for something, at least until we learn that arsenic is used to create the amazing adhesive effects, or that they’re packaged using soon-to-be-executed Chinese political prisoners.
How can something this small change your life? The hard fact of the matter is that is doesn’t, but there is also the truth that dusting does happen with greater frequency, which is good for our marriage. You may have heard, somewhere, that men and women have different opinions about how often things like dusting (or scrubbing the tub floor) need to happen. That’s why the LW still manages most of the laundry, since she has rather picky ideas about separating lights and darks (oh yeah, and whites).
With some household products, these differences get smaller, and that is very near to life-changing. When they come up with a spray bottle to reduce pre-washing in the sink before dishwasher insertion, our lives may become downright idyllic.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he does not pre-wash sufficiently, and if you share this disability, commiserate with him at disciple@voyager.net.

Holiday Greetings to All!

Posting will be consistently well ahead of publication through these next few weeks, so if you're looking here for columns out of the Newark Advocate (Faith Works on Saturdays) or Community Booster (Notes From My Knapsack), watch the dates marked after the header, which should be the pub date for that piece.

And this is where my text goes for archiving; what the Gannett Corp. chooses to actually print is their affair, so don't assume that what you read or heard about from the wood pulp product is what you see pixellated here!

Et in terra pax,
Jeff

Faith Works 12-24-05
Jeff Gill

Christmas Season Begins!

Now we will hear no more -- for eleven more months, at least -- about the debate over whether or not to say "Merry Christmas."
Major retail chains have wrestled with how to instruct their sales staff, fearful of insulting the non-observant or the fervent, let alone upsetting the other faith groups with special days this time of year.
For the Christian community, the challenge now begins to actually get our own traditions right, and begin, not end the commemoration of Jesus' birth with Dec. 25.
Advent is what just concluded for major portions of Christendom, or Double Shifts in the dominant belief system of Retail Consumerism. With the day itself, two Sundays worth or others might say with Twelve Days of Christmas the season should start to make Christmas a -- dare I say it? -- Christian event.
Myself, I'm happy to wish indiscriminate groups I'm around a "Happy Holidays" or receive the same with my change (more likely, an unreadable receipt). What is the grounds for real worthwhile conflict is not how little shopkeepers support ritual practices, but how churches too easily join the mercantile calendar and strip the decorations with St. Stephen's day (y'know, when Good King Wenceslas walked out, Dec. 26).
In fact, our Eastern Christian brothers and sisters, commonly known as the Orthodox of whatever national tradition, whether Russian, Antiochian, Serbian, etc., actually begin their twelve days on Jan. 6 itself. Epiphany, or literally "the unveiling" of who the Child is to the Three Kings, can be the close of Christmastide for many, but it's just the start for some. That's when those onion-domed churches really start hopping, not just for Greekfest on Labor Day.
My hope and prayer for Christians of all types and perspectives is that next year we look to faithfulness to the fullness of our own traditions, and worry less about how to get others to honor them for us out of sequence.
Otherwise, next thing you know, Christian groups might start noticing that Mardi Gras once had something to do with . . . anyhow, Merry Christmas from my family to yours, and however you mark the season of light increasing and everlasting, I welcome your good hopes however phrased!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share a story with him this new year ahead through disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 12-25-05
Jeff Gill

Best Christmas Ever!

So goes the cry from my Little Guy. When you count your years in single digits, each new Christmas bears the very real chance that it will be, indeed, the "best Christmas ever."
You may scoff, from the advantage of more decades under your belt, or with the benefit of historical perspective. For some, the best Christmas is always one in the past. Or is it, really?
The 1950’s have a certain pre-60’s glow about them, with the suburbs still a dream cherished and the establishment a goal to reach, not a cause to protest. On the other hand, before the advent of Medicare with the Great Society and indexed pensions, passing 65 was almost a guarantee of entering poverty, not your golden years, so grandmother’s smile might have been a bit forced. Or if you were lucky, dependence on your children, so smile anyhow.
We can skip the 30’s, other than in "A Christmas Story" and the Coca-Cola Santa in magazine ads, but the 1890’s are evoked in many Christmas cards, with crank phones rather than crank calls, wooden trains as the big ticket toy, and the stray atmospheric oil lamp. A good era to truly feel the joy of the season.
But you also had young industrial America averaging one death per year per factory in the 1890’s, child labor common even beyond backbreaking farm labor done by a majority of our citizens, typhoid and cholera still ravaging cities and countryside alike, and with stables to muck each evening out back who could be surprised?
Reach back for an even simpler time, then, before the Civil War to the halcyon 1840’s of the actual Currier & Ives, with sleighs and covered bridges as much a part of the everyday as gas stations and highway overpasses today. Do you imagine living in that period?
Which was also a time when perhaps a third of the nation’s humanity was in outright slavery, bondservants, or indentured servitude. Many more were free, but not much better off as hired hands on the properties of their betters from the Hudson River valley to the harsh frontier pushing past the Missouri, where Native Americans were treated little better than slaves.
OK, but what about those self-reliant days hazed by woodsmoke and pine boughs, with the first European settlers and Christmastide? Well, aside from the already noted antipathy the Plymouth 1620 crowd had to Yuletide gaiety, half their numbers died the first winter; the older settlement down the coast in Virginia called after the Virgin Queen’s heir James saw something like nine in ten die their first winter, Christmas celebrations or not. Spend December in Jamestown and you’re working long odds against.
Jump the pond then, and go back to the Old World, where so many of our seasonal traditions come from that medieval background of Normans and Saxons and Celts. Good songs they had, all the better to drown out mortality in one’s 30’s, likely less for a child bearing woman, a bit older but with no teeth for the one in a thousand who lived not in thatched huts as serfs but in the cold, damp, drafty keep o’ the castle as nobility. On the other hand, you got the good musicians coming to your table for meat less rotten than most.
And there’s the last step back to the First Christmas, in the little town of Bethlehem, part of captive Israel. Three kings add a certain cachet to the scene, but recall the maniacal servile king they checked in with; Herod, the false worshiper and later baby killer. His Roman bosses had armed troops on most street corners, and where they weren’t, their tax collectors were. And for such a military presence, there was enough civil unrest to make the road from Jericho to Jerusalem notoriously unsafe. Do you wish for an hour walking about unescorted in that time and place?
No, the children may be more on target than they, or we know. This could truly be the best Christmas ever. Enjoy it with those you love, and help someone you don’t know enjoy it too, and you’ll prove the Little Guy right.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your best Christmas ever: disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 12-17-05
Jeff Gill

Christmas Eve is Optional, Right?

For the many Christian traditions we call denominations or communions, there was once an extreme difference in how Christmas was celebrated.
Look at the name, to start with: Christ-mass, shortened (like Christ-kindle to Kris Kringle, or All Hallow’s Eve to . . . y’know) to Christmas. The Mass commemorating the birth of Jesus was a largely a Catholic tradition, and in early America it was groups like German Catholics or French Canadians who had a full and robust tradition around Dec. 25. The Hessians on the other side of the Delaware River from George Washington on a Christmas in 1776 could be counted on to revel and impair themselves, unlike the austere and sober Puritans and Presbyterians of the Continental Army.
I was thinking about this as Granville wrapped up a festive bicentennial year honoring the first settlers in 1805, their Welsh Baptist predecessors, and the Congregational traditions of the founding generation. How did they celebrate Christmas in 1805? They likely didn’t, at all. They had one month or two to build shelters and cabins, and they were the descendants of the Puritan New Englanders who, like Oliver Cromwell in England, hd banned Christmas observances outright.
A generation later, around the date when Dickens set his "A Christmas Carol," how did they celebrate Christmas in 1835? In Merrie Ol’ England, note that the question of whether or not Bob Cratchit got the day o’ Christmas off was not a given. Scrooge was not a nice man, let alone employer, but don’t forget that Christmas Day off work with pay was a gift of particularly nice bosses. In early Ohio, it ‘tweren’t much different. If you weren’t part of the early St. Francis de Sales parish in Newark, or a very "high church" Episcopalian at Trinity, the idea of a worship service on a weekday, Dec. 25 or otherwise, was quite literally alien.
So our situation today is interesting. Christmas Day falls on Sunday, something it doesn’t often do (ranging from 5 to 11 years’ interval, it’s been since 1994 most recently). But Protestant churches of all sorts have gotten used to Christmas Eve services as standard fare. Never mind that most such traditions didn’t "do" Christmas until after the great cultural mixmaster of the Civil War, and Christmas Eve became an expectation largely out of the experiences of World War II soldiers returning from Europe.
Apparently, Christmas Eve worship, derived from the "vigil mass" of more liturgical traditions, is now so much the norm for Protestant groups that a number of them across the Midwest have decided to cancel Sunday worship, given that they gave their utmost for the night before, admittedly for three and more services in some so-called mega-churches.
In Licking County there are a number of faith communities where Christmas Day, Sunday or any day, offers worship each year. Catholic parishes, most Lutheran and Episcopal Churches, and a few others (usually the more liturgical) know that few may choose to attend – this is America, after all – but the congregation will worship in some way.
Wouldn’t Christmas coming on a Sunday mean everyone with Christian somewhere in their job description offer a worship service? From the mega-folk, it would appear not. This is, to many of us, puzzling. What, exactly, does Christmas Eve mean to them? Is it just the cultural ceremony of carols and creches and celebration, or . . .
What is clear is that candlelight commemorations are expected, but worship to mark the day itself (never a Biblical thing, to be fair, but a baptism of Mithras’ birth with the winter solstice starting the march back to longer daylight) has become optional. So optional, that even when it falls on Sunday you can skip it – but you can’t skip Christmas Eve.
Am I the only one who’s a little confused here? If Protestant tradition means anything, it should at least include regular gathering of the community to "every Lord's day
gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions." (The Didache, 2nd century)
I’m glad to say that most Licking County Christian churches, while possibly reducing multiple services to a single gathering, are still coming together on December 25. Because it is Sunday, no matter what else you might make of the day.
But I’ll still join my family at a candlelight service (or two) on Christmas Eve. Not because it’s necessary, but because it does throw a useful light on what we’re anticipating before the presents are unwrapped.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him through disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 12-18-05
Jeff Gill

Making the List

If you were to try to follow him around that night, you could identify your quarry by the junk mail envelope that never left his right hand.
Even pushing doors open, the white rectangle stayed between thumb and fist, corners rounding as the paper rubbed walls and shelves and windows.
In a coat not too stylish, but not warm enough either, he traipsed up and down the sidewalks of downtown, ducking in and out of shops of all sorts. He’d done the mall thing already, and didn’t find anything that seemed right, but since the whole shopping thing wasn’t his favorite activity anyhow, he may have been a bit distracted.
What he wanted was a gift for his wife that wasn’t clothing (which he wasn’t going to try and buy for her under any circumstances) or jewelry (since she said she had enough, which probably meant his previous attempts at purchasing were no better than his taste in clothes).
He’d asked her to make a list for him of things she’d like for Christmas, but that was a little slower in coming than the kids. Once he got the list, on the back of yet another credit card application (contents in the shredder bin, white envelope too wide and crisp to waste), and an evening came open, it was time to go on the hunt.
Most of the items on the list were decorative housewares or pieces of furniture. There was a particular wish she had for a light-colored wood pie safe, and a spot where she’d put it, but that hadn’t been an easy find. Plenty of dark-wood pie safes, and a number of blond breakfronts or cupboards, but not what was on the list.
So he had come downtown to the eclectic array of shops, some well-run and well-lit and others less so, but all guaranteed to have older or less mass-taste items than in the strip malls. There was some stuff that looked like it had been through a fire, and other furniture items that may have been made by a remedial shop class, but then in one place tucked around a corner was a tall piece of furniture that may or may not be what she wanted.
So driving home he thought, and thought again, and then made up his mind. Walking in the house, he asked "Are the kids all busy at the moment?"
"They have a practice at the church, and I just came home to run some laundry through, why? I didn’t expect you home yet," she answered.
"Do we all have underwear if I kidnap you until we need to pick up the gang?"
"Sure, it isn’t a critical load," was her answer, and they jumped in his car and they drove back down to where he thought he’d parked before.
"I get turned around, so I’m not sure where we’re going, but . . . well, I found something from your list, sort of, but it wasn’t quite right, and rather than buying the wrong two-ton thing, I thought . . . I hope this isn’t messing up a surprise."
"No, no," she said quickly, "presents are great but a big, ugly surprise is no good deal."
They parked and started around the block. "I thought it was right next to this place with the neon sign," he said while looking around at the upper storefronts along the block.
"Maybe there was another sign that looked similar on the next street," she offered.
They strolled along, ending up hand-in-hand while waiting for a light to change as the wind blew stronger and colder. Two more corners turned behind them as they kept looking, and then down a broad stretch of sidewalk with their eyes watering in the chill.
"I can’t believe I didn’t write the name of the place down on the list," he muttered.
"What about down there," she said while pointing with her free hand across him to a wide doorway. Without hesitation, they both turned and stepped through and out of the wind.
"I didn’t even know there was anything like this down here," she gasped, stopping a few steps inside. They looked down a long hallway apparently through the middle of the block, with airy cast iron beams lifting glass panels, ice-frosted, in angles above the arcade of dangling banners and irregular doorways.
They walked along, soaking up more atmosphere than window shopping, since most of the businesses were closed, but a few were open and active. They came out into the air again on the next street, glancing into a last place which seemed likely.
"We’re not going to find it again," he said glumly.
"It’s OK, we need to pick up the kids anyhow," she said with much more cheer. "But you know what?"
"No?"
"This time together is better gift to me than another chunk of wood. Can we do this again in a few days?"
"Sure, I don’t even have to wrap that."
"And who knows, we might even find that pie safe the third or fourth try."

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher round central Ohio; contact him at disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 12-10-05
Jeff Gill

Records On Display

There is an archive in most local churches; a time capsule of sorts opened once a year.
Not a history file in a cabinet drawer, or a shelf in the library. It is a closet, a particular one, with a rack and shelf set aside for this season.
These are the Christmas costumes, the outfits that endure from year to year. Some new clothes join the ranks each pageant, and every tableau set beside the cantata results in another pair of angel wings made or glitter halo set fresh on young heads.
But many churches carry a stock from year to year and decade to decade of the core characters, sometimes, depending on closet space and size of the congregation, with three sizes per role. Mary has her blue robes, Joseph usually a brown cloak with tan tunic, and a baby Jesus in reserve on the highest shelf in case no infant has been born since July in the church family to lie in the manger.
Three crowns, if not more, stack alongside a small chest, a pottery jar, and a tattered but still wrapped box. Old retired bathrobes of an assortment of stripes and solid designs hang below. Burlap jerkins usually dangle in quantity for shepherds, and a dark corner nestles a sheaf of staves (soon to be lightsabers during rehearsals).
White robes, sometimes terrycloth or, if there are skilled seamstresses enough, tailored robes cut in varying lengths, hang more neatly, with a plastic bag covering the massed bundle of wings, silver tinsel glued along the edges. If the tailors are truly talented, there are also a few more elaborate costumes: ox and donkey, sheepskin coats and eared hoods aplenty, even the stray goat or camel sometimes. Or there may just be a stack of cardboard or plywood cutouts leaning against the back wall behind the clothes, hinged props swung flush for storage but always ready for action with a slight freshening of the paint.
What makes this assemblage a very special archive in so many places is the massing of small details, and the knowledge of where they come from. This robe was Mr. Tilly’s, given by his wife after he died. The brocade trim on these shawls was out of Mrs. Shellhammer’s scrap bag, her now long deceased but still remembered.
The sheep costumes were made by Mrs. Franklin when she was still Miss Williams, and her grandchildren will wear them in a few years. The shepherd’s staves came off ol’ Miz Varia’s farm, cut by the men’s group when they were clearing brush and raking leaves for her before she passed.
See the wings? Not the newer ones made from foamcore, but the wings now in the back row made from corrugated and painted white (it rubs off, but the robes are white, too, they’re still perfectly good); my aunt made those back when Mr. Jones directed the youth choir.
Over in the west pews, Mr. Boles remembers when his son carried that wooden chest as Melchior. Will he and his family make it back in time for Christmas dinner tomorrow? In the choir Ezziebeth squints to see if her sequins are still even along the edge of Mary’s shawl, and thinks it would be a good idea to re-hem that after Christmas this year.
When the star creaks up into the Bethlehem sky, hanging from a pulley hidden behind the choir loft pillar, two men remember how much work it took to get that thing anchored twenty years ago, three boys now men recall when they got picked to pull the rope at the director’s cue from the front pew, and four women each think they were the ones to make that particular pattern of gold paint and glitter. Only one did the finish that the congregation sees that night, but they are all correct, in a way.
And the one who carefully cut the fourteen-pointed star out of a piece of premium plywood, getting the design from a book on the Church of the Nativity and its centuries old star set in the floor of the ancient grotto, and whispered a prayer under the bandsaw’s whine with each of the twentyeight cuts it took to make it: he’s been gone nearly a quarter century, and no one in the church tonight remembers his name.
Yet his star is still here, drawing all eyes up as it rises, until it descends to a safe place in the Christmas closet for next year.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your pageant at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 12-11-05
Jeff Gill

What’s Up With Wal-Mart?

Bashing "Mall-Wart" isn’t new, but the latest rounds of piling on are a bit puzzling to me.
First, full disclosure. I own no stock in Wal-Mart, have never worked in one, and loathe going to them, as I have an active distaste for mob scenes of all sorts, whether sports-related or retail-generated. No matter how you slice it, big spaces filled with too many people make me edgy.
In fact, I grieve somewhat that the Heath facility will soon be super-sized into a Wal-Mart Supercenter, echoing its Newark North 21st St. cousin. But for myself only.
You see, I think of the older, smaller store as a third less crowded (it may not be, by the square foot) and twice as easy to get in and out of, and I want that because I go regularly, since I use things like toilet paper, light bulbs, and Starbucks coffee regularly.
So like 8 of 10 Americans, I shop at Wal-Mart. I don’t go there for groceries, which is the main development involved in becoming a "supercenter." I buy odd and strange things that places like Kroger and Ross’ Market provide more readily and at perfectly reasonable prices, given that I am buying unreasonable things (filo dough, dal tadka, couscous).
But here’s why, even as a confirmed Wal-Mart avoider in much of my own shopping, I want to stand up for Sam Walton’s modern successors.
A study out of New York University recently has shown that, for lower income shoppers, the impact on their food and staples budget can be as much as 25%, and that’s downwards. Yes, working at Wal-Mart isn’t a fast track to supporting a family, but most service industry front-line jobs aren’t, and little things like health insurance are actually more accessible at Big Blue (didn’t that used to be IBM?) than they are at most other hourly wage employers. You can get that key benefit, while your wages are certainly lower than at other grocery chains: but virtually all of that savings is passed along to consumers.
What do you think Wal-Mart’s profit margin is? Many folk say "30, 40, 50%, huh?" Try 3.5%.
What makes me, as a person deeply involved in poverty and crisis issues for our community, ready to take some flack on behalf of a store I prefer to avoid and could easily afford to not ever go to for paper towels, patterned or not, is what happens when you look at the real impact of a Wal-Mart type operation, and this is true for almost all of the deep discounters. The total savings to lower income families in the US of just this one chain (granted, the biggest of them all) in consumer spending is larger than the total of federal Food Stamp program expenditures. Poor people in America get more back into their budget by way of savings on the stuff they gotta buy (let’s leave DVD players out for the moment) than they get from the Earned Income Tax Credit. This is an over 50 billion benefit to lower income Americans.
So what is my point if I were to join one of the nascent protest movements or boycotts on Wal-Mart? That I can afford to be overcharged for shampoo and aspirin? That the poor should eat cake rarely from a local bakery rather than buy cheap cake mix, milk, and eggs in the Barn O’ Commerce? Sounds like reverse snobbery to me.
In a few weeks, I want to mock the myth of consumer choice, which the big box stores paradoxically do not provide, all their merry claims this time of year to the contrary. For now, I will ruefully appreciate the big changes in store down in Heath, suspecting as I do based on the hard facts that more Licking County residents who need a boost will get one, and I will have to edge through larger crowds to find my minty dental floss.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your shopping tales of woe or wonder to disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 12-3-05
Jeff Gill

The Lion, The Prof, and the Pub

Don’t forget to blame Charles Williams.
You see, his friend Jack had dreamed over the years about a lantern in the middle of a forest, amidst pine trees brushed with snow; when his fellow professor Tollers wrote a book about fantastic creatures and everyday heroism by average folks, it touched a chord. Then "The Place of the Lion," another of Williams’ "spiritual thrillers" based on the entrance into our world of Platonic ideal forms (are you still with me?) included not just a lion, but THE archetype of Lion-ness roaming about and bumping into people, changing their lives, the chord became a melody.
Which was "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Since, as all Inkling fanatics know, Jack is what his friends called C. S. Lewis, friends like J. R. R. Tolkien, known as Tollers, and the late arriving Charles Williams, evacuated like the Pevensey children from blitz-torn London to the Oxfordshire countryside.
The Narnia Chronicles went on for six more books, and there are few events of my childhood more exciting when I went to the library after reading installments of the first volume in a Sunday School weekly and found out that the story went on. If you read right through the final book, "The Last Battle," the tale just begins with the last page.
The three Oxford dons and more who met in pubs and private rooms to meet and read their writing to each other called themselves "The Inklings," and their work as a whole has touched more people than any other literary cabal in history this side of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those last four never got to share a table at an inn, though.
Like many other Inkling fans, I marveled at the parallel but diverse creativity of this group, imagined the scenes in my mind’s eye richly, and regretted that they were none of them filmable.
Then came "The Lord of the Rings" to the big screen, and anything was possible. Except there was one obstacle to Narnia seeing the inside of a theater: much, much more than Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Narnia is pervaded by Christian themes and imagery. To thin out that element of the chronicles is to whittle the plot, let alone the characters, down to frail sticks incapable of supporting a major studio release.
Then came "The Passion of the Christ." Indications are that Walden Media, the firm behind the movies, had committed to Narnia before Mel Gibson’s quixotic quest found mass audiences open to unambiguous faith on film. But the success of "The Passion" had to have helped.
The publishers of the Narnia series made an odd decision some years ago to repackage the set, boxed or just numbered, in the order of events, rather than in the order Lewis wrote them, starting in 1950. So now "The Magician’s Nephew" is labeled "1" when you go to the store.
Yikes. No wonder publishing is in trouble, even as people buy books by the armload. You start with "The Lion, the Witch etc." like Philip Anschutz, the evangelical financier who founded Walden to make these movies, was smart enough to know. Do you really want to tell people who’ve never seen any "Star Wars" movies: start with "The Phantom Menace"? In 50 years, will folks start with Episode IV: "A New Hope"? I think so.
In much the same way, when people ask me about exploring the Christian story, I don’t tell them "First, you gotta read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy." You really ought to someday, but I offer up Luke’s Gospel as a starting point that gives you an entrance to the huge narrative you’re about to enter. Mark isn’t a bad idea, either, shorter and to the point, but Luke carries you along with enough detail to hold the modern mind.
The front porch, though, is the Christmas story. It isn’t quite Luke, but has a pinch of Matthew, and a sprinkle of Isaiah and Micah, with some imaginative interpolations thrown in. You don’t want to live on the porch, and you really ought to read past Luke chpt. 2, but it gets you to the door.
And the Narnia movie will add some very nice decorations for the season to anyone’s house of faith, even if you don’t put a manger scene in the middle of yours.
Now, will anyone have the nerve to film a Charles Williams novel?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share the blueprints of your house of faith through disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 12-4-05
Jeff Gill

Ending Traditions, New Beginnings

Marshall Field’s is no more. The Macy’s behemoth has rolled over another department store chain, and central Ohio has seen quite a few familiar names vanish like Lazarus. Across the Midwest downtown icons like Ayres’, Block’s, or Montgomery Ward’s have slid into oblivion, replaced by supercenters in edge city plazas or newer conglomerations with names like a panzer division commander (Von Maur?) or a French perfume (Parisian?).
For central Ohio, Marshall Field sounds like a rural airport; for those of us with Chicago roots, those are words to conjure with. Their store on State Street, that great street, in the Loop of elevated railway fame is still the second largest in the world, with the second largest granite columns at the main entrance (first? Temple of Karnak in Egypt, as any schoolchild knows). The Second City could claim one first, the largest Tiffany glass skylight anywhere in one of four lightwells piercing the massive century-old block of commerce.
Frango mints in the distinctive green Field’s boxes will still be on sale, promise Macy’s, and much of the experience will stay the same, especially at Christmastime. The season, outside of church events, was defined for many kids across Chicagoland by the animated windows around the block, and a warming visit to the Walnut Room, with a massive tree whose decorations changed each year – except for Uncle Mistletoe at the top.
You only went to see Santa Claus there if you had a few hours to devote to the task, but the animated displays wound along the velvet roped maze on (as I recall, hazily) the ninth floor. The wait was shorter but scenery was lacking at Carson, Pirie, Scott, another early casualty of the retail wars of the late twentieth century. Still, Carson’s always had a Santa with real whiskers.
Macy’s can point to a proud heritage of true-bearded Kris Kringles, and they have history that includes everything from the Titanic (remember the Strauss’?) to a little parade that extends their marketing reach back to Turkey Day, but for some of us, they still aren’t Field’s.
Us Gill kids went often, as you can tell, in the company of our semi-legendary great-aunts, Chloa and Georgia, who had made Chicago their own after World War II. Teachers their whole lives, starting back when marriage disqualified you from the job, they knew how to handle the big city when single women of any age could easily be ignored by maitre-d’s or store clerks. At least by the time we four knew them, no one ignored Chloa and Georgia, at least for very long. But they loved the store whose founder coined the phrase "Give the lady what she wants," and where they were never treated like second class citizens of the Second City.
Aunt Chloa died many years ago, and Aunt Georgia now lives in a hallway where a passcode needs remembering to trigger the door to open. I sat down with her after Thanksgiving in her room, and told her about the changes on State Street. She was unruffled and agreeable, as she would have been if I had told her the T-Rex at the Field Museum had come to life and was outside the door.
I remembered for both of us the time my brother Mike and I had gotten up long before dawn, and ridden into the heart of the big city to enter a darkened Marshall Field’s on a Saturday morning. Aunt Chloa retired first, and promptly got a part-time job in the china and ceramics department of the Oak Brook Field’s, which gave her the right to invite us to the employee children’s Christmas party. We walked into a store still quiet and dim (how many kid’s books involve some version of this fantasy?) and rode the escalators to the majestic Walnut Room itself, which we had to ourselves – with a few hundred other kids, that is.
Only now do I think about how early they must have gotten up to drive out to our home in Indiana, to get us to downtown Chicago at 6:30 am. I mention that, and the lasting memory it gave us. Aunt Georgia smiled and agreed. We talked of other things, or at least I spoke and she nodded, with the occasional affirmative phrase carefully worded, her grammar at least still precise.
Sometimes, you have to remember for others. That’s OK. None of us can keep track of everything worth recalling, anyhow. The Little Guy won’t have memories of either Aunt Georgia or Marshall Field’s, but I can pass along to him my own, and hope he keeps them long enough to hand off someday, to someone special in his life.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; pass along your memories through disciple@voyager.net.

Hey y'all --
Double/double for Thanksgiving week so hard working editors can get dinner with their families next Thursday; below is this week (19 Nov.) and next week's Faith Works on down for 26 Nov., and below that is the 20 Nov. Knapsack with 27 Nov. at the very end. New posts in December!

Peace,
Jeff

* * * * * * *
Faith Works 11-19-05
Jeff Gill

Together We’re Thankful

This week, starting tomorrow night, most of Licking County has somewhere nearby a co-operative worship service, planned by a group of pastors and churches to mark Thanksgiving week.
One of the things I’m most thankful for is the strong spirit of collaborative effort that marks church and society in Licking County.
I’ve lived enough other places to say with certainty that this ain’t always so. For churches of different denominations and traditions to worship together, the common sense of identity has to be stronger than the narrow differences between them. Important differences in some ways, but not so much as to prevent shared thankfulness.
Sunday night, Nov. 20 is the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association’s Community Thanksgiving Service, at Lakewood High School’s auditorium at 7:00 pm. Drawing on Jacksontown, Hebron, Buckeye Lake, and on down towards Thornville, musicians, readers, youth, and pastors will offer up a time to reflect on how fortunate we are and help others in need.
Tuesday night, Nov. 22, the Granville Ministerium offers up their ecumenical worship at 7:00 pm in First Baptist Church of Granville; I hear that a group called "Revved Up" will have some special music that night.
The Newark Area Ministerial Association ushers in Thanksgiving Eve with a 7:00 pm service on Wednesday, Nov. 23. They invite worshipers from all around the area to gather at First Baptist Church of Newark just off the OSU-N campus at 1000 Granville Road, and suggest a food item or canned good for the Food Pantry Network, while a cash offering will be taken for the Newark Area Campus Ministry.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a few other shared services were taking place this next week. Your church bulletin may have word of programs I’ve missed.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years having organized and led a few of these is that there are always a number of folks who attend a Community Thanksgiving Service who don’t attend any other worship programs most of the rest of the year. There’s a quality of non-partisanship that goes beyond even your typical ecumenical endeavor when the fourth Thursday of November comes around.
It may be the roots in civic society from Washington’s first declaration of a "Day of Thanksgiving" to the more direct ancestor of our autumnal festival with Lincoln’s proclamation during the Civil War. It could be the contrary nature of those Separatists who came across an ocean to worship and live as they chose (historical footnote: Puritans were a later development, so Baptists have as good or better claim on the day than do Congregationalists). Even if they didn’t actually have big buckles on their hats or carry wide muzzled blunderbusses, they were brave, determined, and really, really stubborn.
Or we may have a wider base for this communal observance because whatever your flavor of faith, everyone knows that "it could be worse." Even when we feel profoundly sorry for ourselves, we know that others need our help, the help that only we are in a position to give.
But I’d like to think it has something to do with the fact that we are made to be thankful, somewhere deeper than our DNA, to acknowledge that each day is a gift and we can be blessing to others. Whatever your belief about the source of our ethical urges, we all feel a calling to caring on some level, and that starts with our own thankfulness for . . . whatever. You know what’s working for you, and how it isn’t all because you make it happen all on your own.
So come on out sometime this week, slip into a back row if you must (there’s more room to be inconspicuous down front, actually), and join your fellow citizens in saying "Thank you," and in giving others a reason to say so themselves.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; what are you thankful for? It’s not too late to tell me a tale at disciple@voyager.net.

* * * * * * *

Faith Works 11-26-05
Jeff Gill

A Pilgrimage On a Modest Scale

Prayer and fasting were likely not spiritual disciplines in use last week; grace at tables by nervous heads of households, perhaps, but saying "no" to temptations of the flesh and the deadly sin of gluttony not so much.
Whatever you ate, and regretted, you need exercise. Pilgrimage is another of those ancient practices of the devout which is in fashion again – at least to sit on the sofa and read about. Travelers to Santiago and Lourdes and Tibet have come home to share stories of rocky paths leading to a unique destination, if not full enlightenment.
If you aren’t ready for long treks on mountain trails or on your knees across the desert, how about just getting some exercise on Licking County sidewalks?
On some walking tours coming up this week, you can not only work off a bit of the holiday excess you consumed, but you will see the insides of a number of churches and ways of worship for yourself, with friendly guides at hand.
First, this Thursday (Dec. 1) starting at 6:00 pm, Newark offers "Sights & Sounds of Christmas - A Guided Musical Walking Tour of Newark's Downtown Churches."
There are tickets, which are $5.00, with children under 12 free. All proceeds benefit the Licking County Food Pantry, which will also have their seasonal post up at the Gazebo on Courthouse Square. You can get tickets at all branches of Park National Bank, or at the Greater Licking County Convention & Visitors Bureau on Second St., or at all participating churches. Those are:
Second Presbyterian Church - Chancel Handbell Choir & Organ
Trinity AME Church - Adult Choir
Trinity Episcopal Church - Flute, Violin, & Organ
First Presbyterian Church - Piano & Organ Selections
Plymouth Church - Hiltner Brothers
St. Paul's Lutheran Church - Jubilate Ringers Handbell Choir
First United Methodist Church - The Sanctuary Choir
St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church - The Adult Mixed Choir

This tour begins at Second Presbyterian Church, but organizers ask that you park at St. Francis De Sales Church just west of downtown on Granville St. Free shuttle bus service is available from St. Francis parking lot to the Second Presbyterian Church.
Then we have Saturday, Dec. 3. The first Saturday in December has long been the Granville Candlelight Walking Tour, and it has grown in recent years to become both longer and wider, now with programs beginning well into the afternoon and closing with a concert up at Swasey Chapel on the Denison campus.
Not only the "four corner churches" but all the downtown museums, Pilgrim Lutheran a few blocks down Broadway, and the college president’s house, Monomoy Place are part of the festivities. The bulk of events are between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm, but look for one of the posters to see the detailed schedule of who’s performing where when.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is the oldest continuously used worship space in this region (since the 1830’s), and well worth your time just to see this Greek Revival gem. It attracts visitors from all across America, along with near-contemporary the Avery Downer House on east past the library. All the churches are open for free, all with music to share through the afternoon and evening, but consider dropping a voluntary offering where you can. Historic buildings can be the very dickens to maintain. . .
Neatly wrapping up all this is Saturday night at Infirmary Mound Park with Licking Park District’s "Christmas In the County" from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. The noted saint and bishop of Myra, Nicholas the Kind (aka jolly ol’ St. Nick) is scheduled to make an appearance along with a number of other musical offerings. Indoor activities abound, but also a chance to walk around Mirror Lake and work out those last helpings of mashed potato while the kids talk to Santa in the Bradley Building by Rt. 37.
And out there under the stars, offer up a small prayer to really get the season started off right.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; suggest a pilgrimage along local lanes at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-20-05
Jeff Gill

Thankfulness: Why Not?

This week, starting Sunday night, quite a few communities do co-operative worship services to mark Thanksgiving week. One thing I’m thankful for is the strong spirit of collaborative effort that marks church and society in Licking County.
Having lived a few other places, I can say with certainty that this is not the case everywhere. For churches of such diversity to worship together, the common sense of identity has to be stronger than the narrow differences between them. Important differences in some ways, but not so much as to prevent shared thankfulness.
Sunday night, Nov. 20 is the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association’s Community Thanksgiving Service, at Lakewood High School’s auditorium at 7:00 pm. Drawing on Jacksontown, Hebron, Buckeye Lake, and on down towards Thornville, musicians, readers, youth, and pastors will offer up a time to reflect on how fortunate we are and help others in need.
Tuesday night, Nov. 22, the Granville Ministerium offers up their ecumenical worship at 7:00 pm in First Baptist Church; I hear that a group called "Revved Up" will have some special music that night.
The Newark Area Ministerial Association ushers in Thanksgiving Eve with a 7:00 pm service on Wednesday, Nov. 23. They invite worshipers from all around the area to gather at First Baptist Church of Newark just off the OSU-N campus at 1000 Granville Road, and suggest a food item or canned good for the Food Pantry Network, while a cash offering will be taken for the Newark Area Campus Ministry.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a few other shared services were taking place this next week. Your church bulletin may have word of programs I’ve missed.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years having organized and led a few of these is that there are always a number of folks who attend a Community Thanksgiving Service who don’t attend any other worship programs most of the rest of the year. There’s a quality of non-partisanship that goes beyond even your typical ecumenical endeavor when the fourth Thursday of November comes around.
It may be the roots in civic society from Washington’s first declaration of a "Day of Thanksgiving" to the more direct ancestor of our autumnal festival with Lincoln’s proclamation during the Civil War. It could be the contrary nature of those Separatists who came across an ocean to worship and live as they chose (historical footnote: Puritans were a later development, so Baptists have as good or better claim on the day than do Congregationalists). Even if they didn’t actually have big buckles on their hats or carry wide muzzled blunderbusses, they were brave, determined, and really, really stubborn.
Or we may have a wider base for this communal observance because whatever your flavor of faith, everyone knows that "it could be worse." Even when we feel profoundly sorry for ourselves, we know that others need our help, the help that only we are in a position to give.
But I’d like to think it has something to do with the fact that we are made to be thankful, somewhere deeper than our DNA, to acknowledge that each day is a gift and we can be blessing to others. Whatever your belief about the source of our ethical urges, we all feel a calling to caring on some level, and that starts with our own thankfulness for . . . whatever. You know what’s working for you, and how it isn’t all because you make it happen all on your own.
So come on out sometime this week, slip into a back row if you must (there’s more room to be inconspicuous down front, actually), and join your fellow citizens in saying "Thank you," and in giving others a reason to say so themselves.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your turkey leftover ideas at . . . wait, no, that’s Trish. Anyhow, tell me a tale at disciple@voyager.net.

* * * * * * *

Notes From My Knapsack 11-27-05
Jeff Gill

Walking Off Those Turkey Calories

Eat too much? Uh-huh. Even Hollywood starlets probably ate to excess last week ("Sure, I’ll have a fifth green bean; oh, what the heck, another slice of glazed carrot, too"), and we Midwesterners have an entire culture to live up to.
Personally, while there are many great recipes involving real cranberries to be had, I haven’t had Thanksgiving dinner until I’ve sliced something jellied with the can lines still embossed on the maroon surface. Just me, I guess; thanks Nory! I have a great mother-in-law.
Whatever you ate, and regretted, you need exercise. Of all the general statements I could make, there’s one of the safest to our region. If you live where you are reading this, you could probably do with a bit more mobility in your life. Even those getting geared up for the opening of Deer Bang-Bang Season Monday dawn (and our prayers are with you all, be safe) could do with some limbering up and stretching before heading out on a five mile over hill and dale ramble.
So here’s my prescription, if not recipe: Licking County has some great holiday walking tours coming up this week. Do ‘em all!
First, this Thursday (Dec. 1) starting at 6:00 pm, Newark offers "Sights & Sounds of Christmas - A Guided Musical Walking Tour of Newark's Downtown Churches."
There are tickets, which are $5.00, with children under 12 free. All proceeds benefit the Licking County Food Pantry, which will also have their seasonal post up at the Gazebo on Courthouse Square. You can get tickets at all branches of Park National Bank, or at the Greater Licking County Convention & Visitors Bureau on Second St., or at all participating churches. Those are:
Second Presbyterian Church - Chancel Handbell Choir & Organ
Trinity AME Church - Adult Choir
Trinity Episcopal Church - Flute, Violin, & Organ
First Presbyterian Church - Piano & Organ Selections
Plymouth Church - Hiltner Brothers
St. Paul's Lutheran Church - Jubilate Ringers Handbell Choir
First United Methodist Church - The Sanctuary Choir
St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church - The Adult Mixed Choir

This tour begins at Second Presbyterian Church, but organizers ask that you park at St. Francis De Sales Church just west of downtown on Granville St. Free shuttle bus service is available from St. Francis parking lot to the Second Presbyterian Church.
Then we have Saturday, Dec. 3. The first Saturday in December has long been the Granville Candlelight Walking Tour, and it has grown in recent years to become both longer and wider, now with programs beginning well before dark and closing with a concert up at Swasey Chapel on the Denison campus.
Not only the "four corner churches" but all the downtown museums, Pilgrim Lutheran a few blocks down Broadway, and the college president’s house, Monomoy Place are part of the festivities. The bulk of events are between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm, but look for one of the posters to see the detailed schedule of who’s performing where when.
Neatly dovetailing into all this is Saturday night at Infirmary Mound Park with Licking Park District’s "Christmas In the County" from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. The noted jolly old elf of the Northlands is scheduled to make an appearance along with a number of other musical offerings. Indoor activities abound, but also a chance to walk around Mirror Lake and work out those last helpings of mashed potato while the kids talk to Santa in the Bradley Building by Rt. 37.
You could do all three and still have time to dig out your blaze orange for Monday; that might be good advice for all of us…the blaze orange for Monday, I mean.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; let me know how your first day out hunting went at disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 11-12-05
[Note: Due to a production error, this column did not see the light of print!]
Jeff Gill

Making Visible the Unseen

Big, black garbage bags stuffed full of shoes; dozens in the back of vans and in car trunks.
Slowly, we carry them about the perimeter of Courthouse Square, 1250 of them. Four years ago, when the Licking County Coalition for Housing began this "Homelessness Awareness Week" campaign using empty pairs of shoes to represent people and stories, we had to round up and set about some 700 pairs. Each person, a family member of those who came to LCCH looking for help in staying off the streets, in a home of some sort.
Goodwill provides us a deal on shoes pretty well past unsaleable, but there are (disturbingly) always glad takers. I say takers, but they always ask. People who come up to the informational tent, or even as we’re working, on hands and knees, to ask "Could I give you something for these?" We smile and say no thanks, if they are of use to you, please take them with our good wishes.
They tell us "walk a mile in someone else’s shoes." Just to handle and look at a pair as you set them out triggers a torrent of speculation and wonder. Children’s bright Sunday shoes, well tended but worn off at the heels. A pair of Christmas slipons, embroidery still sparkling, but elastic stretched beyond any good use. Sneakers with torn eyelets.
You really can summon up a whole person from the ankles up just by seeing a pair of shoes. We are also likely wrong, people being the unpredictable and uncategorizable folk they are, which is also a lesson about homelessness.
The clients who come in are rarely from out of county, and those few who are usually grew up here, and returned hoping to find family or connections long since frayed out of recognition, like the straps on a pair of sandals I placed between two sets of down at heel loafers. They have very different stories, these shoes and the people who come in the door of the Housing Coalition, and while elements of the tale recur like reverse fairy tales (no magical godmothers, nor wishes granted), the twists and turns are as various as Appleman Road or Loudon Street or Dutch Lane.
In between working on the "Shoes on the Square" project, which culminates in the 11th annual meeting of LCCH next Wednesday at Noon at Cherry Valley Lodge (tickets through 345-1970), there’s also been progress on another story of our county.
Next Friday night the last grand northernmost moonrise, the astronomy around which our Newark Earthworks are built, can be seen from Geller Park in Heath, just off 30th Street north of the mall. Programs will begin at 6 pm, and the nearly full moon will rise at 6:56 pm. We hope families and all interested folk can come out with blankets and lawn chairs and see this beautiful sight.
Two thousand years ago, from places like the ridges along the sides of the Licking River, and atop Memorial Hill in Geller Park, we have the vast evidence of the earthworks to show that people, very like us, stood and marveled at the predictable intricacy of the heavens. When we stand there on Nov. 18 just after dark, we stand in their…shoes? Moccasins? Tough soled feet?
But we acknowledge that our steps are shaped, if only a bit, by the paths taken by invisible multitudes beating a track beneath us, where we often do not look, or see. That "great cloud of witnesses" are pointing us and nudging us all the time, seen or unseen.
The invisible people in our lives, and how we stop to see them and where they become truly visible to us, are very important. They are important, among other ways, in how they help us see how we should live with those we do see, but take for granted, in our homes and churches and streets today.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a pair of shoes you’ve walked in at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-13-05
Jeff Gill

A String of Pearls

Way back when, over a year ago when plans began to celebrate the remarkable astronomy of the Newark Earthworks in Fall 2005, an image came to mind.
Not just one big huge "do," which couldn’t have been the case 2000 years ago when the Octagon and Great Circle and other elements of the vast complex we call the Newark Earthworks was built, since those Native American ancestral people lived all across the Ohio River drainage and traveled on foot.
Add to that the uncertainty of Ohio skies then and now, and any one of the 28-day recurring moonrises along the northernmost angle might be worth a full celebration or could be a foggy night to take the moonrise on faith: faith in the ancient builder’s accuracy, still so impressive today.
So our plans were for a series of events and happenings from August to November, with three best viewing weekends as the "big beads" on a necklace of celebration, and other little accents strung between. The last big bead was and is Saturday, Nov. 19, with a public symposium on the Newark Earthworks at OSU-N in the Reese Center from 9 am to 4 pm, and planetarium shows at 5 and 6 pm in the Olin Science Center at Denison University.
All that is still on, thanks to the Ohio Archaeological Council which has planned the event and aimed the talks through the day (nearly a dozen) at the general public, not just fellow archaeologists. But this last major event was tied to the last, best northernmost moonrise at a weekend, reasonable hour.
Friday, Nov. 18, the nearly full moon rises as far north as you’ll ever see it in the sky, lifting clear of the eastern horizon at 6:56 pm, about an hour after dark. The Octagon site, which encodes the key alignment that started a new period of awareness and study of this area, is tied up with a recently scheduled event that the organizers of the Moonrise programs chose not to compete with.
So what will happen on Friday night, as you get home from work or close a week of school, is that you are invited to a further portion of the amazing Newark Earthworks in the City of Heath. Mayor Dan Dupps and the planning committee welcome one and all to bundle up, bring your lawn chairs and blankets, and drive 30th St. to the turn for Geller Park.
Starting at 6:00 pm on the 18th, programming and some ceremony will precede the chance to view the moon rising just before 7 pm, looking from Memorial Hill at a point exactly halfway between the Great Circle and Octagon. This hillside, sloping up from the parking area around the ball diamonds, offers a vantage point that is both spectacular, and possibly part of the original set of viewing points that led ancient Native Americans to construct the Newark Earthworks where they did.
For more about the geometry and studies that have led the planning committee to use this site as part of our final public event of the year, go to www.octagonmoonrise.org for much, much more detail. The conference the next day and the planetarium shows are part of an exciting weekend that draws to a close the "string of pearls" which have shown our region what a treasure is right around us.
Come on out and join the excitement…and huddle close for warmth!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s enjoyed working on these Moonrise events the last year, and his wife looks forward to getting her basement back soon: commiserate with her through disciple@voyager.net.

Greetings! If you came here to find the outline for small group start-ups that i offered in my Saturday Nov. 5 "Faith Works" column for the Newark Advocate, i've moved it over to:

http://epicycles.blogspot.com

The material is about five pages long as a document, and i didn't want to confuse people scrolling down to find old columns. Thanks to all who used it and passed along comments, and it is still free for the use of any group or congregation that wants to try it -- you just can't sell it or put your name on it!

In Grace & Peace, Jeff Gill

Faith Works 11-5-05
Jeff Gill

To Grow Larger, Get Smaller

A church with a million members: not a denomination, but a congregation. In Seoul, South Korea is such a church. Paul Yonggi Cho is the pastor, and while cultural factors of Korean life no doubt play a role, he says the key factor is the realization "to grow larger, we must get smaller."
In New Testament Christianity, the house church and the small gathering is as common as large assemblies in public spaces, and those moments of worship and corporate life inspired Pastor Yonggi Cho’s insight, which has been picked up by megachurch leaders in America like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren.
Congregations like Willow Creek and Saddleback may be tens of thousands in total membership, but both Hybels and Warren affirm the necessary place of the cell group, house church, or study circle in making such growth, or any growth, possible.
To grow larger as a worshiping congregation, you must get small as a church.
Rolling Plains United Methodist Church south of Zanesville has grown dramatically along with the development of "life groups" with special interests like quilting, motorcycles, caregiving, or prayer. Whatever the specific issue that brought the five to ten together in the first place, they meet regularly (it could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly). Brian Law, their pastor, notes "And they have leadership which is both accountable as well as supported by training and guidance from church staff, and they ground their work in prayer and sharing."
The principle at work is that you can’t effectively share the Gospel until you are ready to share your story with a small, safe group – and listen well to their stories, as well. So a small group might spend 25 minutes with some prayer and study resources, and then spend an hour knitting afghans, or repairing porches for the elderly or disabled in the church area, or cooking dinners for the homeless. Reflection and action, in a context small enough to allow some personal sharing, but with support from a larger structure so no one feels as if they are dealing with the big issues when they come along all by themselves.
Many churches have small groups and don’t know it, or have systems in place that could support a vital group structure. Choir practice, if grounded in some prayer and sharing, can become a small group time; fellowship groups, if the gossip is kept secondary to heartfelt communication, can become a life circle; work groups or mission teams are easily able to facilitate some personal discussion and reflection if given some basic tools along with their standard toolbelt.
Small group life is considered by many church health and vitality consultants as the single best indicator of where congregational life is heading. Ideally, there should be one functioning small group per ten in your average worship attendance. If you average 100 per Sunday over the year, there should be about ten small groups among adult classes, choirs, fellowship circles, and support groups. If you have 11 or more, and they really are providing space for sharing and support along with prayer plus their "official" purpose, you’re likely heading in a positive direction.
A warning, and an offer: for every three new small groups you start, two will likely not survive a year. That’s considered normal, whatever the planning that went into starting the groups. There is an alchemy poorly understood to put a group of people together and build community among them; the best sign is when a gathering occurs around a common interest and they come to church leadership and say "How do we make this a small group?"
The offer is simply an outline for a six week study that any kind of group can use to explore sharing one’s story in a safe, secure small group environment. This can be six one hour gatherings over whatever period of time, or twelve 25 minute sessions tied to another hour spent on . . . needlepoint, carburetors, or home repair.
Send me an e-mail to disciple@voyager.net and I’ll send you the outline, as text or an attachment. Two groups in the area are using it already, and I’m delighted to offer it to anyone trying to improve their group process!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send comments or questions (or requests for the small group outline) to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-6-05
Jeff Gill

Feeling at Home

One thing that lets you know you’re at home is being able to play your own music.
For some of us, that means we feel most at home in our cars (which is another column, I suppose), but whether it’s Bach or "Roll Over, Beethoven," we make a space around us by the tunes we fill it with.
"Phil Dirt and the Dozers" are a popular act in the central Ohio region, with regular gigs farther afield. I’ve heard them compared to a Jimmy Buffet concert or listening to a Little Feat show, with dancing down front no matter what the venue. But while I’ve heard about them for years, I’ve never heard them.
That will change for me, and maybe some of you, on Friday Nov. 11. They are doing a benefit concert for the Licking County Coalition for Housing that night at 8 pm in Adena Hall of OSU-N. It will wrap up "Homelessness Awareness Week" which will again mark Courthouse Square with some informational displays including "Shoes On the Square" (of which more in a bit).
For $25, or a table of eight at $200, and refreshments you can buy there which also serve the Coalition’s cause, you can have a great evening of boogeying to the music that makes you feel at home even in Adena Hall, and help provide housing for people from Licking County who need a transitional time and space to get back into a home of their own.
Fiberglass Federal Credit Union is the sponsor of this great evening, and they have tickets available . . . or call 345-1970 and ask at the Coalition for assistance not in finding housing, but in getting your ticket!
You do know that the pollworkers will be waiting for you Tuesday, don’t you? From 6:30 am to 7:30 pm the polling places will be open and the candidates want to hear from you, as do many ballot questions having to do with funding or maintaining a number of important civic institutions. Do your research, ask questions, and vote on what you know – and you can skip stuff you just have no idea about. This isn’t a test, y’know.
What would make an interesting ballot initiative is the deer situation. A few days ago I was passing Fackler’s Garden Center, and a field across the road had, near sunset, at least 47 deer. I had to speed up and couldn’t keep looking, or I may have passed 50; a few hundred yards further I saw eight deer on the other side of the road. These deer looked scrawny and parasite ridden, as well as traveling in literal herds.
Along Newark-Granville Road alone we’ve had numerous car-deer encounters, and the next fatality is only a matter of time; that would be a human fatality, not deer, who already litter the shoulders of Licking County roads from I-70 to Rt. 13 heading to Utica.
While there are refined ethicists like Peter Singer of Princeton and no doubt a few locally who would say I commit a grievous moral error in placing human life higher than animal lives, I’m here to blunder my way into a further offense: I say we shoot the deer.
Shoot the deer. Yep, Bambi’s mom. There are so many, legs propping up the weight of the carcass right at windshield height, and don’t tell me there won’t be many, many asking why we didn’t do this when the first child is killed in a car seat by a hurtling deer smashing through the passenger compartment.
If we had a vote on how many are willing to take the small chance of a crew of carefully screened and selected hunters sent into municipal woodlots to shoot the deer, I think it would win in a landslide. My wife is a trained environmental educator who worked for the National Park Service, and I lead all kinds of nature hikes and woods-walks in parks around Licking County, and want to respect nature. But . . .
But we need to shoot the deer. Not wrap bushes with netting or plant birth control in feed for the packs of cervids who trample through the fields, nor do we need to study the "human-deer interaction" any further.
We need to shoot the deer. Not all of them, but quite a few. We tried importing lions into the wild (wait, that wasn’t a deer management plan?), and we’re spraying gallons of coyote urine around our gardens (how do they collect it, anyhow?), but it isn’t working. They have no predators but radiator grills and windshields, and that ain’t gonna solve the problem without taking quite a few drivers and passengers with them.
Until we get to vote on that one, would you thank any hunter you know getting ready for deer season in a few weeks, since they may be saving your life?
And sure, send your angry "don’t kill the deer" e-mails to disciple@voyager.net. I’ll open them with an asbestos mouse . . .

Faith Works 10-29-05
Jeff Gill

Justice, Public and Private

To Christian thinkers of the classical and medieval period (which is to say millennia and a half), justice was a personal quality, a way of being for an individual.
One of the marks of the modern era is the idea of social justice, where culture and government are called on to shape and make the circumstances for justice as an ideal to flourish.
There is a place for that kind of justice, but the prominence of social justice has blunted the edge of justice as the measure of the human person. Are you just? Whether a judge, lawyer, police officer, or everyday citizen, can you say of your acts, your speech, your choices that you have lived justly?
Rosa Parks represents a key figure in returning social and personal justice to the same level of significance, even if our culture is still trying to catch up with her, decades after the particular act which brought her to national attention and 92 years after her birth.
For those interested in detail, Taylor Branch’s magisterial "Parting the Waters" can fill you in. What bears repeating is what Mrs. Parks never tired of telling audiences: her feet were not tired; she was not at the front of the bus; it was not a white passenger who told her to move.
A hard working woman, she was indeed at the end of a long day, and boarded well to the back of a bus driven by a man who had thrown her of "his" bus before. The rule in Montgomery, Alabama 50 years ago was that if the rows in the front were filled by white people, blacks not only had to board, pay, and get off to reboard through the back door (while paying the same fare, of course), but if the white seats were filled and more whites boarded, blacks in the middle were supposed to stand up and dangle from the overhead bars so whites could sit. The driver was the enforcer of this unofficial but quite formal system.
What Rosa Parks encountered was this: a surge of new riders evoked a call from the driver for seats to open up (exactly how he phrased this is a long standing debate we won’t get into). Three other African Americans quietly rose and moved to the aisle. A white man remained standing, while Mrs. Parks sat quietly.
You know the story from here, but I want to pause and wonder about that guy standing in the aisle. Right, he’d been raised this way in the South and all that, but still: didn’t he feel a twinge expecting a young woman to stand and straphang while he sat down? Did something tug at his sense of, um, justice? Just a little?
I do not excuse the driver, but he was a paid employee where the system expected his behavior, even if all accounts agree he enjoyed that part of his work a bit too much. He was a tool, a blunt instrument in heavier hands. A triple-refined sense of justice, aware of the social and personal dimensions of his acts, might have led him off his seat, or at least to work the rules differently.
But the fellow who stood there, waiting for the driver to "clear his seat" of the stubborn woman who sat there in hat and gloves and steel spine . . . what was he thinking? Did he realize he was standing near the pivoting axis of a changing world, or was he just annoyed at the uppity girl in "his" seat?
Rosa Parks knew that her personal sense of what is right and true and just intersected with a social moment where justice was long overdue, but ready to "roll down like waters." And it is simple justice that history records her name, but consigns to oblivion the fellow who, as it turns out, never got her seat.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; sing your song of freedom or whisper a prayer for justice to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-30-05
Jeff Gill

Best Fall Colors Ever?

Chlorophyll departing the leaves, removing green tints and leaving some natural hues to mix with sugars breaking down, gives you the color riot that is autumn.
Some have noted that the necessary rhythms of cool and warm, rain and sun, tapped out just the right message to call forth the best range of beauty along the treeline we’ve seen in many a year. Too much heat, and the sugars are baked out making everything bland. Frost sets in early, and the green lifeblood flees and slams shut the stem door behind, tugging a quick drop and a short season.
So far, through this time change weekend and doorstep of Beggar’s Night on Monday, the views across valleys and down lanes has been long-lasting and exquisite. If the rain drags down the stock a bit, all the better to shroud the still-growing grass, more green than us mowers might wish.
In fact, out and about you could see last week trees standing in tidy puddles of foliage. Here, a yellow disc framing the sweep of an oak’s limbs; there, an orange splash surrounding the trunk of a maple. Those artistic notes are now as blurred as an artist’s palette after a long afternoon of daubing, since the wind and rain have swished across the spectrum in any wooded area.
You know to set your clock back Saturday night, for sure, and you’ve been nudged to switch out smoke detector batteries as you grant yourself the added hour. This is also a good time to check your bin set aside with canned goods, an opener, a small bottle of bleach, and a pair of flashlights with a radio stored next to a stock of batteries for them.
No emergency kit put away? How many ice storms, hurricanes, and earthquake warnings do you need? C’mon, it doesn’t cost much and pays peace of mind: batteries are the only real expense, and the whole rest of the disaster bin, bin included, can be put together for less than $50 for a family of four for a week. That’s quite a bit of Dinty Moore or Chef O-Boy, but elegance ain’t the question when power and water are out.
Batteries, though, ought to be swapped out regularly with new and the stored ones into the battery drawer, which every household apparently must have today. Anyhow, here’s a good weekend to do it.
So, there’s some advice you probably weren’t looking for; why stop now? There’s an election coming up, and those fall colors may not be as delightful, but they remind us that some important work on our citizenship job description is coming up.
My broadly intended, generally useless opinions are on offer, based more as a report on what I’m intending while not constituting formal endorsement of no one nor nothin’. For Issue 1, I plan to hold my nose and vote yes. This has been run by us voters a few times, and not unwisely we’ve kicked it back; the state needs some money for infrastructure improvement, and it will benefit localities as now written with a bit more certainty. I’d rather not give the Taft administration more cash right now, but I consider it a reminder and an investment in keeping a sharp eye on the next executive, who will be the one to allocate most of it.
Issues 2, 3, 4, and 5 strike me as reactive legislation, of a sort that we can always approve next time, if the energy exists to run it up the flagpole again. I’m less sure that it is bad legislation (which I suspect) than it is a show of temper about current political circumstances. So I call it no, times four.
Issue 6 hereabouts is for the Community Mental Health and Recovery Board, and they continue to need our support, if only because we can help people when it makes sense (i.e., voting yes now) or spend it on Medicaid bills or jail costs after problems become acute and also unresolvable.
Newark has a chance to continue building up their fine school system, which is working through a very well-wrought plan for dealing with the near-future; there are a number of Fire/EMS levies up that also deserve your support.
Dotted about here and there are some competitive races, and I confess I haven’t kept track of them. I can say that Newark's John Uible was a public servant long before he ever ran for office, in the best sense of the term "serving the public," and y’all’d have to be crazy not to put him and Bill Rauch back on council, where they can amiably stare across the partisan divide at each other.
Granville has the pleasure of seeing Deb Tegtmeyer run for village council, who is my friend of long standing, so why should you listen to my recommendation there? Steve Mershon I don’t know half so well, but I like him, so there you go again.
And since Pataskala decided to keep Bernie Brush around (for local color, naturally), I have no counsel to offer there. He's got plenty to say!
Just read the candidate bios in the papers, go to candidate nights, ask them questions on the streetcorners (they really do hang out there, it appears), and don’t forget to plan on voting Nov. 8, 6:30 am to 7:30 pm. And set your clock back, OK?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; get your last minute political rant in quickly to disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 10-22-05
Jeff Gill

Understanding May Come After Respect

Rick Steeves was talking in my car the other day. Granted, he was on a public radio pledge drive, talking about the books that were incentives for the fund pitch, telling you how to travel around Europe cheaply and well.
Travel is one of those lifestyles to which I’d like to be accustomed, but some of what good travel writing – even in a guidebook! – can teach you is how to live closer to home. Finding the romance of the everyday, as well as a good deal for dinner, is useful just down the road and not just in a small Romanian village.
What caught my attention in Rick’s talk was a set of suggestions about respect when observing events that are strange to you: parades and processions, ceremonies and celebrations, whether on Sicily on down the Danube River.
Americans, Mr. Steeves gently suggested, are a bit "respect challenged" (my phrase, not his) in that we often can see the world as a very large version of the Main Street Parade in Disneyworld or the March of the Nations at EPCOT. Assuming that any spectacle is there first and foremost to take pictures of (yes, the Japanese have some issues here as travelers also), and even for us to plant our children in the midst of, we can be ruder than stink without quite meaning to.
Tonight’s Moonrise observance (weather willing, or perhaps Sunday night if clouds press in before 10 pm), starting from the parking lots of OSU-N and shuttling out to the Octagon Earthworks, is one such challenge right here in Licking County. For all the flyers and brochures and trained volunteers and staff all about, we worry that some will, almost out of reflex, start snapping flash pictures as the Native American spiritual leaders begin the procession into the viewing area.
For Native Americans, the simple hand drum and cluster of singers is what a crucifix or monstrance are to many others. Even those whose belief or theology isn’t oriented the same way have some sense that you don’t jump out into the aisle and blind the acolytes and priest holding sacred objects, but let’s not even talk about weddings . . .
Why is the singing around the steady beat of a drum sacred? Candidly, I can’t really explain it very well, even if I had a whole page and your full attention to do it. It isn’t my belief, either.
But we don’t need full understanding to understand that respect for small simple things is right and proper, whether in the old city of Kyoto, Japan or just off 33rd Street in Newark. And I firmly believe that our respect in such situations can carry back into our own worship with a deeper appreciation of what and why we hold certain moments or objects in reverence, whether it’s Grandma’s Bible on the hall table or the table in the front of our sanctuary.
See you when you get off the shuttle bus from OSU-N!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been working hard for months on arrangements for the events described at www.octagonmoonrise.org. Or suggest column ideas for after this long-awaited weekend to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-23-05
Jeff Gill

Whistling Past the Graveyard

This is a good time of year to visit a cemetery.
No, really. Not just for the Hallowe’en ambiance, but because this is the right time, according to many cultures around the world, to pay our respects and teach that same respect to the young for those who "rest in peace."
Of course, one of the tragedies of our modern era is how little peace so many cemeteries get, even those in churchyards or honored with historic monuments. Some tombstones are toppled by age and frost and the steady western winds of this landscape. Many more are tipped by the indifferent and malicious, some youthful and others less so, but united in a strange urge to strike out at those least able to defend themselves.
Folks often say that a society can best be measured by how well it cares for the weakest and most vulnerable. Certainly children and the elderly should top that list, but what about the dead? A community that tends their memorial plots well, in summer and in winter, year after year, is likely a healthy and decent place. Towns with neglected and vandalized graveyards are often one foot in the hole themselves.
And I believe that teaching the young (and old) about the significance and meaningfulness of the records carved in stone about our ancestors and forebearers, and affirming the importance even of markers no longer legible, can have a community building effect that reaches far past the work of Memorial Day and All Saints or All Souls Days, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 on many Christian calendars.
In Mexico, as is becoming better known, this season of remembrance wraps up with the "Day of the Dead," an outright celebration where tombstones are cleaned, including those adjoining your own family plot if there’s no one left about to tend them. Meals are shared, sometimes even in the graveyard itself, and children are told stories of family and friends who lay at rest there.
Cedar Hill Cemetery is getting visibly better attention these days than I recall from not too long ago (thanks, Kaye!), and Newark’s civic leadership behind Israel Dille, my best friend from the 19th century, built the place as a restful scene for the living to visit as well as for the dead to rest.
Granville has worked very hard on the Old Colony Burying Ground since well before the current bicentennial of the village, and the play "Stones Falling Westward" told a small part of that honorable story of care and responsibility.
Hebron has made their very visible town cemetery much more attractive over the last decade, and Licking Township deserves credit for their attention to and attractive signage for the graveyards under their care.
How has your area taken care of the most vulnerable residents? Who might take a role in tending and tidying and recording the stories in stone of your locale?
The ancient earthworks of Newark represent the mix of success and work yet to be done in Licking County; the "necropolis" or central burying area has long since been destroyed by canal and railroad and commercial development, while we still have some of the majestic monuments that looked across that place toward the rising sun. Still, the question of how to properly handle human remains from that period of local prehistory remains. Whether you join the observance and salute to those long-ago but still visible residents this Saturday night (see www.octagonmoonrise.org for last-minute details), there is surely someplace near you where in this "All Hallows" season you can go one better than a simple candy tribute on "Hallow’s Eve" and respect the honored dead.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; don’t e-mail this week – just check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!

Faith Works 10-15-05
Jeff Gill

So, Did They Worship Nature?

"So, Did They Worship Nature?" That was the question one person asked me after I gave a tour of the Octagon Earthworks not long ago, as a volunteer for the Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site.
I had shared the remarkable story of how recent research had rediscovered a fact hidden in plain sight by the builders 2000 years ago, the Native Americans known archaeologically as "Hopewell." The main axis of the geometric earthworks there, a circle almost as big as the "Great Circle" down by Heath, connected by double walls to a vast, 55 acre octagon, open at the corners with small barrier mounds at the breaks, points to the northwest horizon.
At that spot, the moon rises as far north as it ever does in an 18.6 year cycle. The other openings and walls of the figure point out the other main lunar rise and set points through that cycle. Millions of cubit feet of earth, moved by hand, placed with a modern engineer’s precision to orient earth to sky, for purposes we know no better than we know the name they called themselves two millenia ago.
Which made the visitor’s question a reasonable one, in a way. If there was no seasonal purpose for planting and crops involved (as we suspect for the Great Circle, a story in itself), then was this a religious thing entirely?
Perhaps, but that still wouldn’t make for "nature worship." My daily planner notes that Yom Kippur began at sundown a few days ago, ten days after Rosh Hashanah or "Head of the Year" in Hebrew. Those High Holy Days for the Jewish Faith move about a bit, because the ritual calendar is tied to lunar months. The great observance of the "Day of Atonement" Thursday closes a period marked by solar and lunar periods, but no one would argue that Yom Kippur is nature worship.
Right after Judaism marked 5766 in their new year, Islam began the month of fasting called Ramadan. In my calendar, that began Oct. 4, but it said "tentative," as does the close of the sunrise to sunset fasting Nov. 2. Tentative, because Ramadan does not begin until the new moon appears as a sliver (the crescent you see on so many Islamic flags and symbols), which varies from place to place on the globe. The local imam or ayatollah or leader will actually have to see the arc of moon in the sky to declare the beginning and conclusion of the fast, and the feasting which follows.
And the time of Ramadan moves about through the western 12 month calendar, because Islam uses a ritual calendar based on . . . yep, the moon.
What did the spiritual practice of Native Americans consist of 2000 years ago? We simply don’t know. In western cultures, the role of the world and the relationship of the visible world to spirits and higher powers has been complicated even within Christendom, and "tree hugger" now is the equivalent of the cheap critique of "nature worshipper" in another age. All faith traditions that I’m aware of point out the responsibility of believers to respect creation and the divine purposes behind the gift of life, and like most aspects of faith could stand to honored more in practice than in the breach.
We do not worship the moon or nature to want to mark our lives within the cycles drawn across the vastness of the night sky or across the natural landscape. Chartres Cathedral in France, a monument of medieval faith, has a special set of windows and plates in the floor to track the progress of solstices and equinoxes. Did they worship nature, or Nature’s God, by honoring the faithfulness of the heavenly bodies circling ‘round them?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has been working for the last six months on helping plan the events around www.octagonmoonrise.org and hopes to see you next Sat., Oct. 22! Or just offer regrets at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-16-05
Jeff Gill

Get Used To Agrotourism

Agrotourism is one of those fancy words that can slip into everyday conversation before you know it.
Maybe you haven’t used it yet, but I have a feeling Licking County will get used to it before long.
Tourism that looks at agriculture has quite a pedigree here. Lynd’s Fruit Farm has been hosting tours and greeting school groups in the fall for many years. I enjoyed being a chaperone with the Little Guy’s class last year, seeing the cider presses and selection conveyors and all the rows of trees narrowing together along the horizon. Other orchards have found that a tour, a chance to pick a bag o’ apples, and a cup of cider can, at a modest admission fee, help to cover the steadily rising costs of being in the agriculture business without being in the corporate orbit.
This summer we went back to visit my old hometown in northwest Indiana, and my folks said "Let’s go to Fair Oaks Dairy." OK, we said, since they sounded like they had enjoyed a recent visit to . . . whatever it was.
After a drive down into prairie country south of the Kankakee River, we started to see large clusters of huge new barns dotting the expansive landscape. Soon we saw signs that made it clear we were already in "Fair Oaks" territory.
What this operation is, a hundred miles south of Chicago and less than two hundred north of Indianapolis, is a giant milk cow operation, with tens of thousands of cows (bulls? Don’t need ‘em when you have syringes and a schedule) regularly climbing onto a vast 72 stall circular carousel.
The turntable was where they got milked, all under our gaze from a disease-controlled gallery only accessible from the bus bay, where we had heard a rolling tour from an area farmer who moonlighted (as so many farmers do all over) as a driver-guide, answering questions and steering us through the buildings and along the roads.
What’s so amazing here is that, on modest reflection, the inquiring mind realizes that a large business, wanting into a good market (Chicago-Indy) near a good range of forage crops and a near endless supply of sand for bedding (think Great Lakes shoreline), saw that their arrival could make for problems. Lots of acres (thousands) and lots of manure (tons) makes for a bigfoot presence in a small farming area. How do we show that we’re god neighbors and help folks see what we’re doing in a positive light?
This is America: the answer is charge admission. Oh, and put in a gift shop (lots of cheese) and a café (mostly ice cream and cheese sandwiches) with a museum only a PR staff could love, but skillfully done. My hat is off to them, and you can check them out along I-65 on the way to Chicago if you want, Buy the Colby and bring me a brick, too.
Have you been to Devine Farms or Pigeon Roost Farm for a pumpkin and a day o’ fun? Agrotourism. Stopped at a corn maze or haunted trail around central Ohio? Also agrotourism of a sort, if we’re talking about a farmer paying some of his bills by adding value to a farm visit with a few stray ghouls and sudden chain saw behind the crowd.
Even the amazing ancient history of the Newark Earthworks can participate. Here’s another fun word: paleoethnobotany. Those who study ancient plant utilization in archaeological settings, or paleoethnobotanists, have shown that this area was one of only a handful of places around the world (six, maybe eight tops) where agriculture began independently.
The selection and cultivation of specific seeds to increase yield and ensure nutrition and storage quality is what makes for beginning agriculture. The odd seed crops along with better known local plants like sunflower and squash are a unique gift of the folks who also left us the Octagon Earthworks, which we’ll celebrate next weekend on Saturday at OSU-N. We see the vast geometric shapes on the land that are left, but their microscopic heritage is no less worth of honor, and someone’s museum display or presentation.
More agrotourism.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is but an indifferent gardener, sadly. Tell of your sunflowers, squash, and other local produce at disciple@voyager.net, or see what’s happening at Newark Earthworks Day at www.octagonmoonrise.org.